If you ask many a power user or Linux user, there is a good chance that they recommend the Thunderbird email service as a mail client. The open source service gives you many options with regard to managing your email. Therefore, it is not surprising that people are getting excited about the recently announced Android version.
The Android version of Thunderbird is already available, but not in the form you might think of. Instead, you can turn to the K-9 Mail application, which you free download from google play†So Mozilla, the company behind Thunderbird, is not actually making its own Android app, but is taking over the project from K-9 Mail creator Christian Ketterer. Ketterer is added to the team behind Thunderbird, allowing Mozilla to leverage its expertise in mobile platforms. K-9 Mail then becomes the Thunderbird email client for Android.
Thunderbird invests (financial) resources to improve K-9 Mail. That sounds like music to your ears; it’s good to see two open source projects being merged, and not having two parties both continuing to pump resources into different projects. The name K-9 Mail will disappear over time and transition to Thunderbird. It will take some time and money to get there. The same applies to an iOS version of the app. For now, the team behind the app is concentrating on the Android version of the service.
Want to try out K-9 Mail as a Thunderbird user?
If you’re interested or are using Thunderbird and haven’t downloaded the K-9 Mail app yet, now is the time to give the app a shot. Especially if you like to see the app transform and want to be there when the different parts are rolled out. If you don’t feel like it and just want to use a full product, you’ll have to wait until things calm down and the transition to Thunderbird is complete. However, it is currently impossible to say when that will be.
As a K-9 Mail user, you can expect some changes. Mozilla shares some plans via a tiny roadmap on its own website.
- Account setup via auto-configuration of your Thunderbird account.
- Improved folder management.
- Message filters support.
- Synchronization between desktop and mobile versions of Thunderbird.
These are just the plans for the coming months; after that, we expect bigger changes and more options for K-9 Mail.
All about Thunderbird
You may not be very familiar with Thunderbird yet. At Computer!Totaal we have previously written some articles about the open source e-mail service. For example, it is possible to add and manage multiple e-mail addresses and you can read here how to create a backup. If you just want an overview of the service as a whole, you can go here.
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